Senators' MacLean up for coach of the year

PITTSBURGH – Last season, Ottawa Senators coach Paul MacLean was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year because his young team of largely unproven NHL players earned a surprising playoff berth.

This time around, MacLean is a Jack Adams finalist for his ability to lead his injury-depleted roster into a surprising playoff berth.

In so doing, MacLean has become the first coach since Calgary’s Terry Crisp in 1988 and 1989 to be a finalist in his first two seasons as an NHL head coach. Chicago’s Joel Quenneville and Anaheim’s Bruce Boudreau are the other finalists in the voting, conducted by the NHL’s broadcasters.

“You don’t really know until you do this whether you’re any good at it,” MacLean said Friday, before Game 2 of the Senators second round playoff series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. “It gives you a stamp of approval in what you thought, that what you believe in can work and it gives us credibility as a coaching staff.”

Penguins coach Dan Byslma was complimentary, saying that MacLean clearly deserved the honour for his ability to stickhandle around the club’s injury problems. Byslma said if he had a vote, he would have cast it for MacLean.

At various points during the season, the Senators lost goaltender Craig Anderson, defencemen Erik Karlsson and Jared Cowen, centre Jason Spezza and wingers Milan Michalek and Guillaume Latendresse for extended periods. Even with those absences, the Senators finished the regular season with a 25-17-6 record, seventh in the Eastern Conference.

Senators players were also naturally excited for their coach.

“He’s an unbelievable coach, who we all love to play for,” said centre Kyle Turris. “He always finds a way to make it a fun atmosphere, an atmosphere that everybody wants to be at the rink.”

Winger Erik Condra believes that what MacLean accomplished this year is more impressive than what he did a year ago.

“It was probably a tougher job because of the injuries and shuffling lines and shuffling guys from (Binghamton of the American Hockey League) with a short year,” said Condra. “He was able to bring guys up from Binghamton and put guys in different roles to let us succeed. Some of his calls at the right time almost seem too much, but it ends up working a lot of the time.”

What makes him stand out beyond that, according to Murray, is his ability to match a player’s skills with the proper role within the team.

“There were times during the year when we had seven key players out of our lineup,” said Murray. “He was able to bring up a number of younger players who were playing their first games in the National Hockey League, allowed them to play, gave them ice time, gave them an oppiortunity to play with a variety of linemates or defensive partners and (allowed them to) survive. Not only did they survive, but he put them in position to be successful.”

Murray says the honour is great for the organization as a whole and also a credit to the team’s scouting staff, player development personnel and to the work of Binghamton coach Luke Richardson because the incoming young players were prepared for the challenge of playing in the NHL.

MacLean went there, too, deflecting credit away from himself to the support system.

“I’m just representative of this because I’m the head coach,” he said. “I’m the organizer.”

MacLean does acknowledge, however, that the club had an internal meeting following Karlsson’s devastating Achilles injury, which resulted from Penguins agitator Matt Cooke slicing the back of his leg. He sent the message that there would be no pity party.

“One thing we wanted to make sure was that we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves,” MacLean said. “Did it galvanize our team? Probably. It gave them a little bit of something where they knew they were probably going to be an underdog every night.

“What the injuries gave us was opportunity. People took advantage of that opportunity and developed into very good players.”

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